


a map of those who used to live here

by pieandsouffle



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, First Meeting, Gen, Minor Character Death, Pre-Series, attempt made at replicating dwj's writing style
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26853334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pieandsouffle/pseuds/pieandsouffle
Summary: In the land of Ingary, where such things as witches and demons and mermaids exist, it is rather a misfortune to suddenly find yourself an orphan. There it is not known that social services do not exist, and even if it was realised, nothing much really could be done. So upon finding himself suddenly lacking both a mother and a father at the age of twelve, Michael Fisher knew he was in very deep trouble indeed.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 15





	1. Facts

**Author's Note:**

> *dabs to merry-go-round of life*

In the land of Ingary, where such things as witches and demons and mermaids exist, it is rather a misfortune to suddenly find yourself an orphan. There it is not known that social services do not exist, and even if it _was_ realised, nothing much really could be done. So upon finding himself suddenly lacking both a mother and a father at the age of thirteen, Michael Fisher knew he was in very deep trouble indeed.

Michael’s father once made his trade as a fisherman on the thin, uninhabited stretch of coastline to the north of Porthaven. There he was one of the only fishermen to cast his nets there, and as a result had a monopoly on the market of fish coming from that region. The problem was that this area was notorious for playing host to the worst-tasting fish in Ingary, so having such an advantage really did nothing for the Fisher family. Michael’s mother was well-known for making some of the best jams in Porthaven, and so that really offset the bad fish and they were not altogether too badly off. The money was just enough for rent in a small, comfortable-enough house close to the docks, and to keep the fishing boat in good shape.

Michael was too young to work other than occasionally running errands for neighbours for a ha’pence or so, and in any case, he spent most of his days at the little, creaking old school where his mother and his father had gone when they were his age. The roof was made of tin and the holes in the bricks hastily mended by leaning wooden planks against the walls, and the whole place smelled like fish. Michael didn’t mind so much. The fish smelled better than the ones his father brought home for supper, and you only needed a really good school if you expected to make something of yourself, and Michael happened to be helplessly mediocre.

It wasn’t that he was stupid, and it wasn’t that he didn’t want to make something of himself. If you lined up all the students in his year level from left to right (best to worst marks), he would have been perhaps the fourth or fifth person from the left. This was quite respectable in a class of fifteen. But the trouble, said his teacher Mr Hendelhome over the jar of Fisher jam he was eating with a spoon in a meeting with Michael’s parents, was that Michael did not get good marks because he was clever. In fact, Michael rarely understood something the first time it was explained. But he always did eventually from simply slugging through it until it worked out in his brain. That sometimes took a very long time, but when that thing finally clicked in his brain he never forgot it. Persistence was a good thing to have, Mr Hendelhome acknowledged as he sprayed blueberry preserves across the sticky, fishy desk, if you were very smart. A very clever, persistent person would make something very great of themselves, like a sea-captain or that odd wizard further into town. A stupid persistent person would make a very good fisherman. And in Porthaven, the only line that existed was the one dividing people into stupid or clever. So mediocrity and stupidity led to the same fate: life on a fishing boat.

After that meeting his mother and father sat him down at the dinner table (a rather pungent trout with lots of cranberry preserve) and explained kindly that while yes, he was doing quite well at school and he wanted to move away from Porthaven as a grownup, it just wasn’t possible. The universities (big schools, as Mr Hendelhome described them wisely through the spoon in his mouth) were very expensive. Too much for a small family of fishermen and fruit-preserve-makers, and only the cleverest of the lot would be able to get a scholarship and go for free. And sadly, while Michael was very persistent, he still didn’t compare to Abigail Miller or Joseph Carpenter (who would have been smashed flat against the left wall), who were both lucky enough to be persistent and extremely clever and would almost certainly try their hands at university. Michael was upset to hear this, but unlike Joseph Carpenter he was lucky enough to be very good-natured. So Michael finished his dinner, thanked his parents politely for the discussion and promised to think on it, and then he went to bed early. He didn’t sleep. He spent that night staring at the ceiling above his bed and feeling disappointed tears leak down over his cheeks and onto his ears, and never brought up a life outside Porthaven again. He continued to do what he did at school (he was not one to give up, even if it was hopeless at this point), eat his father’s revolting fish and his mother’s delicious jam, run errands for the neighbours.

He knew that it wasn’t really anyone’s fault and there was no point in being upset at his mother and father or Mr Hendelhome over it. Mediocrity wasn’t bad. At least he wasn’t the eldest of three, or seven, or the richest or poorest in Porthaven, which meant he surely wouldn’t get any excessively bad or good luck. He was the only child of a thoroughly unexceptional couple, which meant Michael was destined for an unexceptional life of unexceptional fishing or jam-making, to have unexceptional children who would do unexceptional things at Porthaven’s unexceptional school. Life might be dull at times, but it would be secure.

Michael’s unexceptional life deviated when one grey, grumpy morning his father went off fishing, as usual, and never came back.


	2. Worries

Things escalated quite rapidly after that.

“I’m certain he’s fine. There’s no need to worry,” said his mother worriedly over tea. It was just jam on bread today, as few fishermen had been out on account of the storm. It had raged all day and seemed keen to rage all night as well, rattling the windows of the Fisher house and stretching long fingers of water beneath the doors.

Michael had not gone to school that day. He worried tremendously all day that Mr Hendlehome would be angry that Michael missed school. He needn’t have worried. Mr Hendlehome had not gone to school, Abigail Miller had not gone to school, and none of the other students had gone either. The exception to this was Joseph Carpenter, who had arrived at school at eight o’clock and left at two minutes past eight when a cascade of fish was picked up by the wind and deposited through the sea-facing window.

Michael had instead spent most of the day mopping up the water that crawled into the house and worrying. At about eleven in the morning he worried that his father would be unable to catch anything, and they would go hungry that night. He took a brief break from worrying by walking at a forty-five-degree angle down to the bakery to get a loaf of bread.

“Where’s your mother?” Mr Boulanger asked as Michael handed him a soggy penny.

Mrs Fisher was in the process of moving all the jars of preserves from the cellar up into the attic so that the water would not affect them so much if the house flooded, so Michael told Mr Boulanger as much. Then Mr Boulanger asked Michael where his father was, and when Michael replied Mr Boulanger gave him an odd look and pushed a ha’pence back across the counter. This did very little to make Michael feel better.

He returned at a one-hundred-and-thirty-five-degree angle and with a loaf of dark rye, which was even darker than it should have been from all the rain it had absorbed. He mopped the floor again, and at three he considered the prospect that his father might not come home at all.

He was very good at worrying. He might have been able to do it professionally were it a real job. This was not reassuring.

The sun allegedly set at some point and Mrs Fisher managed to light a very smoky fire, on which they toasted the rye bread for tea. It did not, he reflected as he chewed through peach preserve and salty toast and charcoal, taste very good at all. It tasted even worse when he thought about where his father might be.

“Your father is a clever man, and a good fisherman,” his mother said. “I’m certain he will be just fine.”

Michael looked across the table at where she was brushing crumbs from her lap and knew that she knew that he knew that she knew that he knew she was not being honest and that there was very, very much to worry about.

“Yes,” he lied. “You’re probably right.” The lie did not make him feel much better. He knew sometimes it was good to lie to yourself because it would trick your brain into not fretting. Michael disliked doing this on principle. He had not bothered lying to himself about his chances of going to university. There hadn’t been any point to worrying, as there were simply no circumstances that would enable it to ever happen. Lying to himself about it would not have done anything but made him feel worse when the truth came out.

“You’re right, mum,” he repeated. Saying it made him feel shivery all over and full of dread.

He went to bed that night under a damp blanket and stared at the ceiling and worried.

* * *

The weather the next day was marginally better than the day before. It was hardly dry, but the soggy dampness in the air was not violent, and so was – however slight – an improvement.

Michael floated in a shallow, uneasy sleep, and woke to find that the blanket from his parents’ bed was spread over him. This made him even more uneasy, as it had been very cold in the night and this surely meant his mother had gone to sleep without a blanket.

“How did you sleep, dear?” his mother asked as she leaned over and spread strawberry jam over the slice of bread on his plate. She had huge dark bags beneath her eyes. She looked dreadful. Michael was certain that he looked the same, but that it was harder to see as his skin was so much darker than hers. He hadn’t slept until it was so late that it had gone right back around and was actually very early.

“Alright,” he said untruthfully.

“So did I,” his mother lied right back. “I’m sure we’ll see your father today.”

And she was right, and they did. They didn’t see him until about five in the evening, which was when Vera Miller docked her little boat in the harbour and came to tell them that she had found Mr Fisher and had him aboard. The tone of her voice indicated that the circumstances were not good, and this was only confirmed when they nervously boarded her ship to inspect the bluish, still person she had draped with the spare sail. They thanked her for recovering him. Then they went back home and cried.

Mr Fisher was buried the following day in soil as wet as the sea in which he drowned. The priest made a speech that Michael didn’t hear. It rained. Both he and his mother got saturated. Michael said nothing, and neither did she. He had spent all of last night crying, and with the way the day was shaping up he rather expected he would spend all of today crying too. Lots of people told them how very sorry they were for their loss, and he and Mrs Fisher went home after buying somebody else’s fish to eat for tea. It tasted much better, and felt much worse. Each bite felt like he was both eating and insulting his father’s memory.

“We can finish the rye bread tonight,” his mother said with little enthusiasm, putting her fork down with a clatter. “We’ve some blackberry jam that will be good on it.” She did not sound much interested in this, but what else was there to do?

Michael nodded, not trusting himself to speak without starting to cry again. His eyes were dry and sore. He wasn’t sure he had many tears left in them.

They sat quietly in front of the fire and finished off the bread. They kept sitting there long after they finished the bread, until Mrs Fisher broke the silence by coughing violently.

Michael stood hastily and went over to hit her between the shoulder blades with the heel of his hand, but she went on hacking away wetly and made vague gestures that possibly indicated she was alright. He hovered. She coughed more. He filled a jam jar with water and thrust it in her direction.

She downed it all and cleared her throat. It sounded like hard work.

“Are you alright, mum?” he asked.

“I’m just fine,” she said. “There’s no need to worry.”


	3. Numbers

Mrs Fisher died forty-one days after Vera Miller found Michael’s father in the bay. The funeral was just as small as his, and Michael went back to an empty home. Mum had said that was no need for him to worry many times in the last three months, but worry Michael did and he felt no better for it. Nor did he feel worse. There were, after all, many more things to worry about now. But it had been a very long day and while there was nothing he wanted to do, he wasn’t opposed the idea of laying down and leaving the world for ten hours. And if he was lucky, he wouldn’t dream.

He only left the world for an uneasy hour before a thick, suffocating sensation in his chest and stomach woke him. For a moment he lay there, eyes squeezed tightly shut. He hadn’t yet cried after the funeral ended. He wondered if that made him a terrible person. He’d cried for his father afterwards, and for his mother before, but his eyes – while sore – were dry. He opened them to stare at the blank ceiling above and started to think.

His parents had been the Fishers’ only source of significant income. Michael’s brief errands hardly contributed to maintaining a house, paying rent, buying food, maintaining a ship, buying jam-jars, sending him to school. All it had really done was allow him to occasionally buy a couple of sweets from the lolly shop further into Porthaven. This was not maintainable anymore.

He would be buying food for only one now, which would allow the food allowance to be cut by two-thirds. There was no fishing boat to maintain. He did not know how to make jam, so there were no jam jars to buy. His mother had tried multiple times to teach him to make preserves, but each time he managed to burn himself with the scalding, sticky syrup and so she sent him off to run errands for a neighbour.

Less food. No boat. No fish. No jam jars. He could sell what was left of the jam in the cellar, and that might cover food and rent.

There was no chance, however, that it would be able to pay for school.

Michael gazed miserably up at an ugly blotch on the ceiling. When his parents first sat him down to explain the fruitlessness of school beyond Porthaven, he had known they were right and accepted it. Mediocrity resulted in mediocrity. But he had been glad enough to think he would be able to finish school _in_ Porthaven before he went on to live a mediocre life, which was alright because at least he had his mother and father. Now it seemed that he had neither of those, and nor was there any chance to continue school.

He _could_ continue school, of course, if he was an idiot and willing to fritter away the little money that was left. Michael knew he was no genius, but he was also not a colossal idiot. School was a lost cause. He had to focus on other things now and would make do without. He would _have_ to make do without. There wasn’t anything else he could possibly do.

Sleep also seemed to be a lost cause. Michael went out into the dim kitchen to sit at the table in order to better think. He took a detour to the room that once was his parents and took a pillow. Then he sat down at the kitchen, squeezed the pillow to him and buried his face in it. It still smelled like his mother. He breathed in deeply and started to count.

There was some money to be made, for sure. There would be that made from selling the jam, from his mother’s clothes, from his father’s, from their possessions they no longer needed, from renting a room instead of a house. Although maybe it would be best to sell _his_ clothes. Then he would only have to wait to grow into his father’s and wouldn’t need to waste money as he grew. His clothes were more worn and so would surely fetch less, but in the long run it seemed a more financially sensible decision.

He changed that entry in his mental list and finished counting. Then he went back over it all again in case he’d made a mistake, but after three reiterations he concluded that he was right the first time. He thought about how much money rent would be. And food. And fresh water. And –

There simply wasn’t enough money.

“Alright,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Stay calm.” He did not feel calm. That thick weight pressing into his chest had gotten heavier and heavier. He thought earlier it was just grief. Now he knew it was complete and utter dread.

He didn't know what to do. He wished his mother were there. There were a lot of things he wished for recently and none of it had been delivered. He wished his father had not gone out fishing that day. He wished his mother had not given him her blanket. He wished he had some worthwhile skill to offer an employer, but the facts remained: he was twelve-years-old and an orphan, and had about two months until he would no longer have a home.

It seemed that there was, in fact, a lot to worry about.


	4. Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a few weeks of homelessness, Michael takes the plunge and dares to stop at the doorstep of the Sorcerer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to write about Michael trying to adapt to life on the streets, but it was depressing and I legit couldn't write anything. also just skipping it was the only way I could actually post the stuff that I wrote this for originally lol

It was after three weeks of being on the streets that Michael decided to try the Sorcerer’s door.

Not to knock on, of course. Michael had learned that lesson very quickly when the money first dried up. People were very happy to help when one had a problem, but as soon as that problem became a problem that was a problem to them, they felt significantly less charitable about it.

So after the twenty-first time he had been kicked off someone’s doorstep and it had started to rain, Michael decided he ought to try sleeping somewhere that people were too scared to go to normally. And that was how he found himself leaning against the severe wooden door of the Sorcerer’s, laying his father’s old jacket across his legs and settling down to sleep as best he could.

It was a rotten evening. A stubborn leaky gutter dripped on him, but he was at least sheltered from the wind on the street, which was so fierce that people just needed to jump in the air to be transported to the other end of the street. _And_ , Michael thought to himself, he was getting very used to being dripped on. Usually by a lot more water.

He went to sleep feeling shivery and miserable against the doorframe of the Sorcerer and had shivery and miserable dreams to match. He saw his mother putting fish in with the saucepan for the jam, and his father pulling blueberries up in his nets, and then he was falling unpleasantly. It was more unpleasant to find that he really had fallen when the Sorcerer opened his front door. He opened his eyes to see a spectacular silver buckle on a shiny, fantastical shoe, and then stared up to the wizard himself staring right back. Michael scrambled to his feet and realised, to his horror, that he had fallen _inside_ the wizard’s home.

“Er,” said Sorcerer Jenkin. He looked mystified. He was tall – young, Michael supposed, but he was only twelve and wasn’t sure what _kind_ of young that was – with lots of very long, pristine black hair. It looked darker than the night sky, and almost hurt to look at. Michael pulled his eyes away from his hair and tried to look at the wizard’s face. His eyes were a very shallow, unsettling shade of green, so Michael moved his gaze a bit higher and settled on the wizard’s eyebrows, which weren’t as unnerving as the rest of him.

“I’m sorry,” Michael told the eyebrows. “I meant to be gone by now.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Michael had intended to sleep on that doorstep for as long as he possibly could, as it at least was sheltered from the bitter wind billowing off the sea and not too much rain got in. He might’ve stayed there the whole day, but for a brief recess to get some food with his rapidly-dwindling supply of coins. Michael had good hearing and expected that he would have heard when someone was coming to the door and been off before anyone was any the wiser. But the weather that day was as obscenely miserable as the day before, and so dark that he wasn’t altogether surprised he’d overslept. He tried to edge around the wizard to get back outside, but Sorcerer Jenkin was taking up most of the space in the doorway and didn’t seem likely to move.

He also didn’t seem to have heard a word Michael had just said. He scratched his chin with a very clean, manicured nail and said vaguely, “I’m off to the bakery. You might as well wait inside.” Then he shut the door behind him, and Michael stared at the back of the door from inside a wizard’s house.

He was so surprised he might have just gone on staring for the rest of the day, or until the wizard got back, but then remembered that that man was a wizard, which meant he was in a wizard’s house, which was undoubtedly full of lots of dangerous things, so he pulled himself together after a couple of seconds and turned around and hoped something wouldn’t explode and kill him.

He was not instantly killed, which was actually only the second lucky thing that happened that day. The first (although Michael would not become aware of this for a while longer) was being asleep on the wizard’s doorstep in the first place.

He was in a smallish room with wooden beams crookedly framing the ceiling. Between them were draped vast tapestries of spider-silk that softly glowed with the reflections from small, mysterious mirrors that lay scattered about the floor. The mirrors were small – about the size of his hand if he splayed his fingers, and with holes in their centres. Michael peered cautiously into one. His reflection peered worriedly back at him, lines of different colours shooting out from the hole. He stepped back.

These were undoubtedly windows into other worlds, and he wondered why the Sorcerer left them lying about so. There was a higher concentration of them situated about an odd silver chest with lots of buttons labelled with strange symbols. A set of four buttons, larger than the rest, stood out. One had a triangle pointing towards the right, another two vertical lines, the third a square, and the last had a triangle pointing upwards with a horizontal line beneath it. Michael couldn’t fathom what they might have meant, but he knew that whatever was inside was indescribably magical. 

_Everything_ seemed magical there, from the spiders weaving their way across the ceiling and the multicoloured, flickering light from the mirrors. There were shelves stuffed full of spellbooks. There was a battered dark workbench covered with smeary luminous stains and fearsome gouge-marks as if from a weapon carried by an extremely violent person. There were dishes piled high in the sink, wreathed in climbing veins of green and pink fungus like coral or molluscs climbing up the worn legs of the jetty. With the weird light, Michael could almost imagine them moving with the waves.

And there was the window. It was dirty and difficult to see through. He pulled a sodden cuff down over his hand and wiped a particular grubby pane. As the dirt came away, Porthaven revealed itself.

There was the sea, roiling grey in on the horizon. There were sheets of rain pummelling passers-by mercilessly. He could spy the school swaying back and forth at the docks, a couple of miserable gulls hunkered down beside a chimney pot. And there –

He craned his neck.

 _There_ was the little house he had spent twelve years growing within. There were lights on in the windows. It looked warm, and comforting, and inviting, and Michael wished his father had never gone off fishing so hard that it made his jaw and chest ache.

He touched a few trembling fingers to the glass where his home glowed and remember that he was soaked and dripping and very, very cold.

There was warmth behind him, so he turned and tiptoed around the mysterious mirrors to warm himself by its source, which was a happily crackling fire. Except the fire was very strange, and that pulled him up short.

For a start, it was bright blue, and not the same blue as the fires lit from the driftwood he sometimes collected down on the shore. It was a violent cobalt with little flecks of green from the flames at the top, and sharp little purple flames at the bottom. In the heart of the fire were two orange flames – the only normal fire-coloured parts of the whole thing – and with a jolt Michael realised that he was looking at a face, and that whoever’s face it was, they were alive.

There was only one thing to do in a situation like this.

“Hello,” he said to the fireplace.

The fire shuddered, as though it was very surprised. That made two of them, Michael thought. “Hello,” it said back. Its voice sounded just like wet wood being set in a bonfire.

“Are you having a nice day?” Michael asked, wondering whether mysterious flaming creatures in fires had a concept of a nice day.

“No,” said the fire.

“Okay,” said Michael.

The fire didn’t seem to need a reply beyond that. It elaborated on its displeased response with a whiny speech that suited its whiny voice. “It’s not even eight o’clock and I’ve already had to heat three bathtubs worth of water for Howl.”

“Howl?”

“Sorcerer Jenkin,” said the fire, shuddering and growing a little as another log caught. “Wizard Pendragon, the Wizard Howl. Howl Jenkins BA, MPhil. Whatever he’s calling himself, wherever you’re from.”

“I’m from Porthaven. We call him Sorcerer Jenkin. Or just the Sorcerer, really.”

The fire creature made an odd motion that Michael realised might have been a nod, or a shrug. “Yes. Well, he got up hours ago to redye his hair.”

“I did think it looked a little unreal,” Michael admitted.

“Doesn’t it? It looks blacker than yours, and it seems to me yours is about as dark as a humans’ can get.”

“I suppose so.” He was very tired when he fell through Sorcerer Jenkin’s door, but staring at this strange fire creature had him wide awake. “If you don’t me asking,” he asked hesitantly, “what are you?”

“I’m a fire demon.” It certainly looked demonic and a little frightening, but Michael wasn’t of the opinion that a demon working for a wizard in a town like Porthaven could really be very dangerous, at least not to someone who wasn’t threatening it.

“How does that work? Did the Sorcerer summon you, or conjure you, or – ?”

“That’s not how fire demons come about,” said the fire demon sniffily. There was silence for a few moments, and Michael saw that an explanation wasn’t likely forthcoming, and he didn’t want to push his luck.

“So you live here?” He eventually asked, finding himself at a loss once again.

“I’m stuck in the fireplace,” was the sour reply. “I do all the cooking and the heating and the magic, and Howl goes off – ” the demon made a very displeased sound.

“I see.” Michael shivered, and turned it into a nod.

“You’re wet,” said the demon. “Stop dripping on the floor and get dry.” It flared up bigger, and Michael sighed as warmth spilled out from the fireplace and washed over him. He scuttled a little closer, so that his leg was leaning against the stones of the hearth. The demon gave off an odd sort of warmth, encompassing. It felt as though there was another lit behind him, and he actually turned his head to check. All that was behind him was the worktable beneath the window, the sink, and the odd grey box. All looked cold and unappealing.

“Thank you,” he told the fire. “Do you have a name?”

“Calcifer.”

It seemed a good name for a fire demon. “I’m Michael,” he said. “Michael Fisher.”

The fire didn’t acknowledge it. It looked at him, and the orange flames got smaller, like it was narrowing its eyes at him. “Why were on the doorstep, Michael?”

Michael felt a very nasty jolt in the region of his lungs, or maybe his heart. “Oh,” he replied. “Well, you see – ”

He meant to tell Calcifer, very succinctly, that his parents had died and he was sleeping on the doorstep because there wasn’t anywhere else to go. But instead of the words coming out like he meant them, his face screwed up and he felt, to his horror, his cheeks grow very hot and tears well up in his eyes. He grappled with his feelings for a few seconds, feeling Calcifer’s gaze on him.

“Are you _crying_?” asked the fire demon incredulously.

“No.” He scrubbed an arm over his face, but his sleeve was still wet from the rain, and his face just got wetter and wetter until he could have cried openly without there being a noticeable difference. “Yes. Sorry.” He hauled in a deep, stuttery breath. It kept getting interrupted as his lungs tried to push air out before he’d properly drawn in the breath, and so it sounded very shaky and squeaky and took a lot longer than it should have. “Sorry,” he repeated. He hiccoughed in the middle of the word.

“Something bad is the reason,” Calcifer deduced.

Michael nodded shakily. The fire demon didn’t say anything else, just crackled quietly while Michael calmed himself. When he felt like he could speak without bursting into tears again, he tried again.

“My parents died,” he said, and that had to be enough for a few minutes as he recovered. Then: “I couldn’t afford rent and I had nowhere to go.” Then there was a fresh bout of tears, and they both had to wait a bit longer for him to finish. “That’s it, really.”

“I see,” said Calcifer. “Isn’t it cold on the doorstep?”

“Very,” Michael replied. “But not as much as it is on the street. The doorway blocks a lot of the wind, even if I did still get dripped on.”

“Like you’re dripping on me.”

Michael looked down. There was an awful lot of water in the hearth. It wasn’t likely that it was all his tears or all from his sodden clothing or his hair, but it was definitely from a combination of the two at least. Now that he wasn’t almost numb, he could feel his hair was just touching the top of his forehead in looser, heavier curls than he normally had. He raised a hand to them and pinched his fingers at the root of one and dragged his fingers to the end. An unlikely amount of water came out, and the curl bounced back into a tight coil. Calcifer made an annoyed hiss, and the droplets on the hearth evaporated.

“Sorry,” said Michael. He made to move away, but the fire demon made a scoffing sort of noise and told him not to be stupid.

“No point in staying cold,” Calcifer grumbled.

“But there’s not much point in you getting cold too,” Michael pointed out.

“I’m made of fire. I don’t get cold, I just get annoyed.”

“Are you annoyed?” Michael asked with a nervous jolt.

Calcifer did an odd thing with his flaming face that was definitely a sudden change of expression. His mouth closed and his eyes squinted. Michael wondered whether that was his annoyed face. Had he walked into a wizard’s house and immediately annoyed the other inhabitant? Should he leave now? But Sorcerer Jenkin had told him to wait here. What for? It couldn’t possibly be anything good. Or maybe it was. Lots of people came to him to buy spells from him, and they were usually small ones like protection spells and enchantments to stop food going off. The Sorcerer may have let him in out of charity. But who knew what wizards were like? Maybe charity was a cover for something. What if spells used body parts? What if the Sorcerer realised that if Michael were to disappear, no one would come to find him?

The best thing to do was leave while Michael still had both arms and legs and a working brain and the vast majority of his internal organs. He shuffled his feet, considering. It was wisest to leave, yes. He ought to go right now.

This house was strange and alarming and confusing, its inhabitants even more so. It was unlikely, he finally decided, that they meant harm, even though Calcifer did look quite frightening. Then again, no one else in Porthaven meant Michael any harm. But they hadn’t meant him any help either. By letting him inside, Sorcerer Jenkin or Wizard Howl or whatever he called himself had done more for Michael than anyone else had. And once he got back, he would probably tell Michael to leave.

And the idea of going away from the warmth and dryness of the house to re-enter the cold and wet and misery outside made Michael’s eyes burn..

He didn’t want to leave, he realised. He didn’t want to leave, he didn’t want to go back outside into the awful place he’d been for weeks and weeks and leave the first nice place he’d been in since Mrs Fisher died.

“No, I’m not,” Calcifer admitted.

“What?” Michael asked as he tried to conceal a sniffle.

“Annoyed. I’m not annoyed.” The fire demon looked at him with a disconcerting, unblinking stare.

Fires can’t blink, Michael reminded himself.

“Okay. Thanks.”

Calcifer crackled.

There was silence for a while.

“Calcifer?” he said eventually.

“Yes?”

“Why did Sorcerer Jenkin invite me in? What am I going to do when he gets back?”

“I expect,” said Calcifer, “that you’re going to have breakfast.”

**Author's Note:**

> yeet idk when anything will get finished this is not a priority rip


End file.
